The Breakthrough Institute has published a series of case studies entitled Where Good Technologies Come From: Case Studies in American Innovation. From agriculture and locomotives to aviation and cancer treatment, the brief argues that great strides come when the public and private sector work hand in hand. As their headline case, the Breakthrough Institute sites the iPhone as no better example of the invisible hand of government.
The Origins of the iPhone
A blog post about Where Good Technologies Come From states that the iPhone brought together a number of communications and information technologies made possible by federal funding:
- The microchips powering the iPhone owe their emergence to the U.S. military and space programs, which constituted almost the entire early market for the breakthrough technology in the 1960s, buying enough of the initially costly chips to drive down their price by a factor of 50 in a few short years.
- The early foundation of cellular communication lies in radiotelephony capabilities progressively advanced throughout the 20th century with support from the U.S. military.
- The technologies underpinning the Internet were developed and funded by the Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency in the 1960s and 70s.
- GPS was originally created and deployed by the military’s NAVSTAR satellite program in the 1980s and 90s.
- Even the revolutionary multitouch screen that provides the iPhone’s intuitive interface was first developed by University of Delaware researchers supported by grants and fellowships provided by the National Science Foundation and the CIA.
The post’s author Jesse Jenkins calls the iPhone emblematic of the public-private partnerships that have driven America’s technological leadership. The two forms this partnership has taken are 1) government acting as an early funder of kscience and applied research and development, and 2) the government helping to develop new industries by acting as an early and demanding customer for innovative, high-risk technologies that the private sector was unable or unwilling to fund.
Download the full report as a PDF here. It’s well worth the read.
